Shortstories

Bad Data

You know that feeling when you pull down a data base and you narrow it down to right what you want and everything’s going fine, everything’s hunky-dory, and then the next thing is that you realize that the data is bad? Well that’s the story of my life up to now – if you know the feeling that I’m talking about then you’ll have some insight into how I’m feeling right now. It’s a real pisser, to put it mildly. I really had thought that I was getting somewhere – I had created this situation for myself and I thought it was pretty cool and then the next thing is that I find out that it actually isn’t cool. I find out that it isn’t cool at all. It’s actually very uncool but there’s nothing I can do about it. People say oh but you should do this or oh you should do that but none of that shit works. I know that without even trying it. What can you do when you’re starting off on the basis of bad data, after all? You can’t get good results out of bad data.

I could see the green light throbbing away somewhere in the very periphery of my vision, the type of green light that I like, the type of green light that makes me feel safe and I knew if I could tune into this light I would be OK. I had to make everything be this green light so there was nothing else in it. Then I’d be in the world which is made up entirely of the kind of green light that they have on electrical devices sometimes to show that they’re on and not off. It wasn’t working for me though because I’d been translated into the Shadow World. It’s frightening how easily you can be translated into the Shadow World isn’t it? It happens before you realize it. I looked down at myself from some vantage point up on the ceiling and I could see that I was a shadow-creature with no substance – I sat down in the chair in the kitchen area of my apartment and I crossed my legs but I was only crossing shadows. I ran my hand nervously through my hair but my fingers were shadows just like my hair. I was in the Shadow World now and I never saw it happen – the real world was gone for good. It wasn’t even a memory any more – my memories were shadows just like everything else…

I could hear the noise of electric locusts in the air, swarms and swarms of them. There was an angry buzz all around me. It sounded like hundreds of thousands of badly insulated volts looking for somewhere to go, looking for some way to jump the gap. It was a nervous kind of a noise. I looked up but there was nothing there – there was nothing to be seen. The sky was clear. Move along now people there’s nothing to see. Move along now. The Smilers were back in town with their sharp little noses, their thin lips and their mauve-painted fingernails. They jostle you and push you and crowd you off the streets. They move in packs and they win out through strength of numbers. The Friends were milling around outside the front door of my house calling out softly in their telepathic voices. Calling for me. Calling for me to come out and play with them. That’s what you get with bad data. The data was all bad in the first place so what do you expect?